Being immersed among more than a million pieces of dried, suspended flora seems to awaken something in people.
Coming from a long line of gardeners on her paternal side (her father was head gardener of Anglesey Abbey in Cambridge) and of artists on her mother's side, Law was almost predestined to "paint" with flowers. She has created installations all over the world, from Kuala Lumpur to Athens. Entering one is like walking through a hanging garden: Some strands are wispy and delicate, others muscular and sculptural, with suspended lotus seed pods and thick bunches of roses.
Such installations are demanding to create. Law spent days foraging in Oahu's heat for the Honolulu exhibition, on display until September 10, 2023. She climbed ladders for hours in galleries, attaching lengths of flower-dotted wire to a scaffold. Volunteers and staff collected thousands of flowers, pods and branches from Oahu's botanical gardens; the museum also asked for people to donate flowers, which were then dried and frozen. Volunteers, under the tutelage of Law's gregarious husband, Andrew, strung the plants on copper wire using techniques the couple devised over years of trial and error. "The residents of Hawaii need little instruction whilst helping to wire flowers," Law says, referring to the Islands' lei-making traditions.
For Rebecca Louise Law’s stunning new installation at the Honolulu Museum of Art, the British artist has collected, dried and strung more than a million pieces of flora (seen above left and right), including many local and native Hawaiian species. Law hopes that viewers wandering among the columns will be reminded of “the love we have for each other and this Earth,” she says.
The locally harvested flora joins strands from Law's prior installations, which she has sculpted and re-sculpted over the past eighteen years. "Once this artwork is de-installed, it will be packed and sent to the next exhibition," Law says. "I now have over a million flowers in my permanent collection." Even so, she still finds new sources of inspiration. While Law has created installations in other tropical locales, she had never used bougainvillea, which she fashioned into thick ropes. Her favorite new discovery is the seed of the quipo tree, native to Central and South America, gathered from Foster Botanical Garden in Honolulu. "It has made this artwork glow and quiver in the breeze," she says.
Law, who makes her home in rural Wales, hopes her work will remind us of "the love we have for each other and this Earth. The little time we have is swallowed up by commercial distractions. Treasuring all we have on this Earth is at the core of my artworks. I treasure through preservation-I believe each natural element has so much to give until it turns to dust and returns to the earth."
